Volkshaus zum Mohren
The former Volkshaus zum Mohren in Gotha , Mohrenstrasse 18, was a historic inn and an important meeting place in Thuringia .
Location in place and naming
The Volkshaus zum Mohren was located in the so-called Mohrenvorstadt of Gotha in the protected valley of the flood ditch. Here the old trade route from Frankfurt to Leipzig, running in an east-west direction , crossed the Via Regia (today Bundesstraße 7 ) with the north-south connection from Ohrdruf - Langensalza (today Bundesstraße 247 ). The location outside the walled medieval town center had the advantage that merchandise did not have to be declared to the town and there was more space for the carts than in the narrow streets of the old town.
The origin and meaning of the name for the Moor has not yet been clearly clarified. It occurs more frequently in inns and pharmacies and here probably refers to Saint Mauritius ( the Moor ), a Roman Christian soldier who came from Thebes in southern Egypt and who was martyred as commander around 290 when crossing the Alps because he did not wanted to pull against Christians. He has been venerated as a saint since the 4th century and is the patron saint of the Magdeburg Cathedral, which emerged from the Mauritius Monastery founded in 937, and the city of Coburg , which was built around the Morizkirche in the 12th century .
history
The inn in the early modern era: Von Zinzendorf, Goethe and others
In 1553 the house "Zum Mohren" was first mentioned.
In 1661, Jeremias Wittich recommended the inn ad insigne Aethiopsis (with the portrait of the Moor) as a place to stay . It was the only residential building outside the city that was allowed to remain under Ernst the Pious during the construction of the baroque city fortifications from 1660 to 1663 . In 1664 it was first mentioned by August Beck. In 1730 the inn "Zum Mohren" belonged to the auditor Johann Jacob Catterfeld (1684–1749). In an aerial view of Gotha made at the same time by the Augsburg copperplate engraver Matthäus Seutter (1678–1757), the inn is shown below on the left as a four-winged building with an inner courtyard, which is located directly on the Flutgraben in the suburb of the then approximately 50 houses in front of the Erfurter Tor.
In 1740 the World Synod of the Moravian Brethren met in the "Mohren" after its founder Nikolaus Graf von Zinzendorf had been expelled from Electoral Saxony two years earlier . This Protestant-Christian, Pietist religious movement was founded by him in 1722 by accepting Moravian and Bohemian exiles on Zinzendorf's estate in Upper Lusatia , and from there it spread throughout the world through intensive missionary work. Churches in America and Africa had existed since 1735. After the Gotha Synod, a colony of the Brethren was established in the neighboring Neudietendorf in 1743 . Today the Moravian Brethren has around 850,000 members, mainly in Africa, America and Europe.
In 1749 the house was acquired by Tobias Samuel Riede (1704–1757) and after his death in 1757 it was passed on to his wife Dorothea Margaretha Friederika Riede and his son Paul Christoph Riede (1733–1757). In 1760, the widowed Dorothea Riede married the valet Johann Philipp Freytag (1725–1772) and celebrated their wedding in the "Mohren". The house came into the ownership of the Freytag family. In 1772 the house was taken over by the steward Heinrich Gottfried Freytag (1731–1792). On December 27, 1775, a masked ball took place in Mohren , in which Johann Wolfgang Goethe took part and then spent the night in the house.
1777 to 1907: Emperor Napoleon, King Friedrich of Prussia, Duke August
1777 was Gottfried Heinrich Freytag rebuild radical and a house Rococo - gable provided. The remaining putti-like figure of a Moor with the Ethiopian - Coptic cross probably comes from this conversion. In 1794 Johann Philipp Freytag was the host of Zum Mohren. On December 7th, the wedding of his youngest daughter Auguste Eleonore Freytag to Georg Bernhard Schäfer (1749–1845) took place in the house. The house came into the possession of the Schäfer family.
In 1801 the Liebhabertheater im Mohren held a centenary, at which August Wilhelm Iffland's trousseau and August von Kotzebue's Das Neue Jahrhundert were performed. In 1805, Duke August (Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg) engaged the traveling actor company von Witter and housed it in the Mohren. She stayed there until 1812 and then lived in the stone mill.
In 1813, Emperor Napoléon Bonaparte stayed in Mohren from October 25th to 27th on his retreat from the Battle of Leipzig . Until the 1920s, guests were shown the Napoleon room, on the wallpaper of which his adjutant Collendière had left a handwritten note: Cette piéce était en Novembre 1813 la de-meure du grand Napoléon en retraite ápres la bataille de Leipzig. Collendière. (In November 1813, this room was the accommodation of the great Napoleon on his retreat after the Battle of Leipzig.) The framed piece of wallpaper with the inscription is now kept in Friedenstein Palace. Two weeks later, the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III arrived in Mohren on November 11th, stayed overnight and was received there by Duke August.
On May 27, 1814, the host Georg Bernhard Schäfer was appointed postmaster for his services in the postal service under the French occupation . In 1824 there was an expedition of the Extrapost , which was described by Johann Georg August Galletti . 1825 King Friedrich Wilhelm III stayed overnight on October 16. of Prussia again in the Mohren. 1828, on November 1st, the first “express car” of the Post, which was admired by everyone, stopped there. In 1830, a heavy thunderstorm with hailstorms and flooding caused great damage on May 24th.
In 1845 GB Schäfer died on June 27th as a result of a bladder disease. He had run the inn for over 50 years. His son Carl Friedrich August (1796-1880) and his sister Dorothea Gelbke were heirs. In 1846 the heirs sold the house to host Johann Andreas Fuchs from Nuremberg . In 1848, on May 8th, a rental contract for 200 thalers a year was signed between the owner and the post stable master Gustav Malinckrodt father and son. In 1856 the Neue Casinogesellschaft bought the Mohren for 15,100 thalers.
In 1881 post stable master Dr. Anton Müller owner of the house. In the following years he set up a beer hall “Zur Thames” and had Franz Brack renew the embankment wall for the flood ditch. In 1897 the steam beer brewery M. Soller acquired the entire building complex and had the restoration "Zur Thames" rebuilt by the master builder Hermann Erdmann. The first floor of the back building was used as the workshop of the court fortepiano manufacturer Ernst Munck .
1907 to 1933: “Volkshaus” for the workers' movement
In 1907, the long-time Gotha Social Democrat Wilhelm Bock (1846–1931) acquired the prestigious building with a large garden in the middle of the city for 140,000 marks including the economic equipment from the brewery owner Grosch. He had it restored and then sold it to the SPD's own Volkshaus mit Herberge GmbH , which was founded for this purpose, at the same price that it had cost to buy and renovate . The idea of founding such people's houses for the labor movement originated in the USA and was first realized in Thuringia in 1904 with the construction of the people's house in Jena . Volkshäuser were also founded in other European countries at that time, for example the Volkshaus Zurich in 1910 .
On the property between the inn and the Flutgraben, a multi-storey new building for a printing company and the trade union was built according to plans by the architect Carl Stehmann (1872–1933). In his memoirs, written in 1927, he noted with satisfaction about the Gotha construction activities at the time: “Now the party and the trade unions have their own home, they could meet next to each other. The establishment of the Volkshaus gave the movement a powerful boost ”.
On September 22, 1914, a military hospital was set up in the Volkshaus. In December 1915, 20 members of the Reichstag, including Bock, refused to approve further war credits and were subsequently excluded from the parliamentary group and party by the party leadership led by Friedrich Ebert and Philipp Scheidemann . They founded the " Social Democratic Working Group ".
In 1917 the "parliamentary group of the Social Democratic Working Group in the Reichstag" invited to a "Reich Conference of the Social Democratic Opposition" in the Volkshaus zum Mohren in Gotha, which took place from April 6th to 8th, 1917. Delegates from 91 social democratic constituency organizations and 15 members of the Reichstag, a total of 143 people, took part. They decided to found the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) as a separate party alongside the SPD. The main aim of the USPD, in association with Spartacists and revolutionary workers, was to prevent the war from continuing and to force it to end quickly.
On October 31, 1918, a demonstration meeting of the USPD took place in the Volkshaus zum Mohren. The house became the meeting place and weapons depot of the Gotha Workers 'and Soldiers' Council and the Council of People's Representatives of the Republic of Gotha , consisting of Wilhelm Bock, Emil Grabow and Adolf Schauder .
In 1920, on March 13th, the KPD's executive council to ward off the Kapp putsch met in Mohren . On October 12, the USPD split at the party conference in Halle . While Otto Geithner fought with the communists, Wilhelm Bock returned to the SPD and later wrote, “The Gothaer Volkshaus became the site of screaming concerts, and Geithner - who had abstained from excessive bullying up to the Halle party congress, now stepped in his full audacity and unpolishedness. He had swindled himself into the majority on the cooperative board, and thus dominated the Volkshaus, he was not lacking in swearwords, he enthusiastic about my work in the Gotha state parliament, which he had always participated in, and so attacks against me fell day after day for months through ”. The radicalization and the quarrels of the left parties led to a severe loss of reputation among the population.
In 1921 the architect Alfred Cramer drew a "preliminary draft for a storey structure on the south wing of the Volkshaus zum Mohren in Gotha". In 1923 the local committee of the General German Trade Union Confederation (ADGB) collected contributions "to pay off the mortgage for the Volkshaus Gotha". In 1927, rallies took place in the Volkshausgarten on October 20 and 29. Among others, Ernst Thälmann and Walter Ulbricht spoke .
In 1928 the Volkshaus was extensively rebuilt according to plans by the architect Bruno Tamme. The half-timbered facades were massively renewed, the rococo gable with the Moor figure was raised by one floor and the roof was renewed in neo-baroque forms as a mansard roof with dormers to gain space. The historical Moor figure was integrated into the facade. The restaurant was renamed "Café Volkshaus". In 1930 the following organizations were located in the building after the renovation: Headquarters of the workers' secretariat, the workers' sports center, the German metalworkers' association , the German construction workers' association, the German railway workers' association, the German painters' association, the factory workers' association, the union hostel, the international Association of Victims of War and Labor and the Tenants' Association . In 1932 the Hamburg public insurance company “ Volksfürsorge ” became the new owner of the Mohren.
In 1933, a communist meeting took place in Mohren on February 18, during the Reichstag election campaign . The police were thrown with chairs.
1933 to 1990: State propaganda club and leisure center during the dictatorships
On May 2, 1933, one day after the traditional “Labor Day”, the house and the neighboring trade union building - as in around 160 other cities - were occupied by the SA and taken over by the “ National Socialist Company Cell Organization” (NSBO). The entire property of the trade unions and thus also the people's welfare and the Haus zum Mohren were transferred to the German Labor Front (DAF) founded as a successor organization . On August 19, 1933, it was renamed “House of the German Labor Front”. A hotel with a restaurant, which was run by the innkeeper Emil Koleda, the "Deutsche Werkmeister-Verband" and the "Sturmbannbüro 5/95 of the Gauleitung Thuringia" were housed there. In 1935 the hall was rebuilt and considerably expanded. In 1936 a dance hall was built in the commercial garden by master builder Pemsel. In 1938 the hotel was called "Hamburger Hof", probably after the location of the owner. The street name was changed to " Robert-Ley-Straße ".
In July 1945 the Soviet military administration in Germany (SMAD) took over the administration of the city and the Mohren. The Free German Trade Union Federation (FDGB) was founded as the new umbrella organization for the unions in the Soviet sphere of influence . The main tasks of the organization consisted of social security, safeguarding workers' interests in the company and organizing leisure time. The FDGB opened an office in Mohren on August 21. The first full assembly of the works councils of the FDGB, district committee Gotha with 700 representatives from 160 companies followed on September 16. On November 16, the youth union meeting met. One day before Christmas, a farmers' market with an open market was held in the Volksgarten and finally, on December 31, 1945, the year ended with a New Year's Eve event by the State Theater, the venue of which had been destroyed in the war. On January 3, 1946 there was a KPD event for the 70th birthday of the future President Wilhelm Pieck , on January 13 a Lenin-Liebknecht-Luxemburg celebration with Werner Eggerath as speaker and on January 15 the first joint conference of KPD and functionaries SPD.
The restaurant-café and hotel reopened on February 16, 1946. On February 25th, the SMA handed over the house to the FDGB . The founding ceremony of the FDJ local association took place on March 22nd , on March 9th, around 500 delegates came together for the agricultural workers' day to prepare for the spring appointment; on April 6th, the last state party conference of the KPD took place with Wilhelm Pieck to prepare for the unification party conference. and April 22nd in Berlin), on August 24th there was a large public women's meeting and on September 22nd there was a memorial service in honor of the victims of fascism in the Great Hall with a memorial speech by Otto Geithner. On May 4, 1947, a festive conference was held with Walter Ulbricht on the 1st anniversary of the SED. On the occasion of the 200th birthday of Johann Wolfgang Goethe on May 29, 1949, a memorial plaque was attached to the house. A commemoration ceremony for the 5th anniversary of the murder of Ernst Thälmann took place on August 18th.
In 1951 the trade organization (HO) took over the house and opened a HO hotel and restaurant on September 16. In 1953 there was a mass rally on November 17th in Mohren for the month of the Society for German-Soviet Friendship (DSF) with Deputy Prime Minister Otto Nuschke . This was followed on December 29th by the SED celebrating the 35th anniversary of the founding of the KPD.
In the following decades the Volkshaus zum Mohren was the leading event location in Gotha for conferences, family and company celebrations, concerts and dance lessons. In 1990 the Volkshaus zum Mohren was assigned to the Treuhandanstalt .
After the turning point: closure and demolition
The Treuhandanstalt initially had the windows and the most necessary building services replaced, but closed the former HO hotel and restaurant on January 31, 1991 and in 1994 sold buildings and land to a private property developer, which became insolvent in 1997.
In 2000 the old town redevelopment area was expanded to include the Mohrenviertel. In 2001 Frank Horny carried out an architectural historical study on the building, which is listed as a cultural monument in the monument book, on behalf of the Thuringia State Monuments Office . He stated: "The property fulfills the characteristics of a cultural monument, which means that it is inevitably subject to the provisions of the Thuringian Monument Protection Act."
On May 25, 2007, the city of Gotha acquired the land in a foreclosure auction . On June 6, 2007, the city council decided on the basis of a resolution proposed by Mayor Knut Kreuch , against the votes of the parliamentary group of the Left and against the concerns of the monument council, to demolish the structurally intact cultural monument. In October 2007 the building was demolished despite massive public protests, which manifested itself in letters to the editor, rallies and legal opinions. The gross demolition costs amounted to 117,572 euros.
literature
- Oliver Bauer: Mohren demolition draws circles , in: Thüringer Landeszeitung Gotha, September 27, 2007
- Wilhelm Bock : In the service of freedom, joys and sorrows from six decades of struggle and ascent , Berlin 1927
- Vera Dähnert: Volkshaus disappears , in: Thüringer Allgemeine Gotha, October 6, 2007
- Holger Gorr: Arbeiter-Wirtschaften: On the history of the people's houses , in: express - newspaper for socialist company and trade union work , Frankfurt 2008
- Frank Horny: Architectural history study “Volkshaus zum Mohren” . Erfurt 2001
- Uta Wallenstein: Napoleon and Gotha , in: About Napoleon… (exhibition catalog of the Friedenstein Castle Foundation) Gotha 2006
- Matthias Wenzel : Timeline of the history of the "Mohren" , publ. Association for City History and Old Town Preservation, Gotha 2007
- Matthias Wenzel: From Vorstadtgasthof to Volkshaus , in: Thüringer Allgemeine Gotha, September 14, 2007
- Mario Hesselbarth: On the history of the USPD in Thuringia , ed. from the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung Thuringia, Jena 2017
Individual evidence
- ↑ Rathauskurier , No. 10/2007, page 5
Web links
Coordinates: 50 ° 57 ′ 6 ″ N , 10 ° 42 ′ 35 ″ E